What do women want, you wonder? Hmm! Let's see...
In between going through all our childhood being told that
we are meant to keep the house clean; refrain from being violent "because
it's un-lady like"; strive towards dreams that would include a prince
charming and a glass sandal [in the figurative or literal sense]; aim to be the
"coolest" teenagers without being cheap naive young sluts; go through
high school and college as the invincible alpha beings who can handle pressure
from every corner of life and then impress some bloke who would probably just
want to marry us for all the wrong reasons; have beautiful and SMART kids with
the bloke as is expected of us, while keeping a full time job with a straight
face...
and of course...
Fighting for a top spot in class with the boys while being
able to keep up with the fashion trends to impress the same boys; losing
friends one by one as our careers, our relationships with "the man of our
dreams" and [maybe, just maybe] a kid-on-the-way or already-born child
takes centre stage in our lives, as we try to please 'the girls', our men's
boys, our in-laws, our siblings, our parents, not to forget our colleagues,
longtime high school and college buddies, the women at the community centre or
church, not to mention our own kids...
All this time - especially in our teenage hood - we stress
over the shame we'd put our families through if we were to fall pregnant, yet,
we do not wanna disappoint that "boy" who's every girl we know is a dream
'cause he wants to have sex with us but we're not ready yet. So we end up torn
between a rock and hard place all because this bloke has chosen us and not the mean prettier girls we know. And it makes us feel so damn special!
And then in our early 20s, we feel like we could concur the
world; we have just completed college, we have a great job with a decent salary
and the future looks promising. Then we turn 25 and start worrying about the big
30, 'cause it approaches so damn fast! So we wonder what it would do to us if we
reached 30 and would still not have achieved all the dreams we had the timeline
for. You know, the "I will have had three degrees, gotten married to the
man of my dreams (who had better fit into my checklist) and had kids by the
time I turn 30" kind of dreams.
Realising that we may not achieve half, if not all of them
by then, we end up settling for a totally different life. Then we become
miserable, if not resentful towards everyone and everything we think might have
had a hand in "destroying our dreams" and then we sink into
depression and watch the years race by as we get in too deep on the routines of
our daily lives - get up earlier than everyone to fix a quick breakfast, drop the
kids at school, go to work (which we don't even like but stay in because it
pays the bills with hardly any savings), pick up the kids from school, get
home, bathe the kids, prepare dinner, serve it, help the kids with their
homework, retire to bed exhausted and then do it all over again the following
and every other day - that we forget who ever wanted to be.
As soon as we turn 30, we start worrying about turning 40,
and menopause, and wrinkles, and getting old, and losing our shine, and...
well... dying from some weird old age or lifestyle disease... without having
achieved all our dreams! You know, the job of our dreams, probably being famous
- for the vain - (sorry to say), the prince charming chapter, BEAUTIFUL and
SMART kids, a beautiful home; a happy family, you name it.
Still wanna know what we want? Hmm... The truth is, we don't
know 'cause we live all our lives trying to be us as well as everything else
the society expects us to be! So we die still trying.
It's Mothers' Day. It's the month of May, so I dedicate it
to my fellow mothers.
What do we want; as women and as mothers, really? I'm gonna
use this month to reach out to all the mothers to help me attempt to tackle
this question.
Yeah, I'm talking to all of you; the married mothers, the
single mothers, the foster mothers, the grandmas who take care of their grand kids for whatever reason, the sisters who have taken their nieces and nephews in for
whatever reason. Yeah, I'm gonna be talking to all of you this month, even the
pregnant ones, not to mention the ones who keep starring at the pill every
night wondering when to stop taking it for fear of the unknown. And no, I won't
forget those who wish they had kids as well as those who are trying to have
kids but that belly just won't keep anything in because I was once you. Yeah, I
know you can't help going, "Oow" every time a woman walks past you
pushing a pram with a sleeping baby in it... and I'm gonna be talking to you
too 'cause I feel you.
We are going to explore what it is that makes us wish we
could celebrate the second Sunday of the month of May (Mothers' Day) every
other Sunday amidst all the junk that goes on inside our heads [that I have mentioned
above].
You know, a lot of us complain that men don't get us. But
I'm gonna need us to be very honest this month as we celebrate what makes us
the mothers that we are or wish to be, if we are to seize the day and be happy.
For now, I know I'm not too late to wish the working moms,
the foster moms, the full time moms, the grandmas, the aunties-cum-moms, the new
moms and my fellow single moms; a HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY!
I know the best of us are already getting ready for the week
ahead; packing kids' lunches, already preparing tonight's dinner, lunch or even
breakfast (depending on the time zone in which this finds you), preparing for
that meeting [or presentation] at work tomorrow [or in the course of this week]...
whatever it is you're doing right now, do not - even for a second - forget that
God's got you.
I mean, I don't know any mother who could say there isn't a
God (or a higher power, depending on what your faith entails), yet whenever
they look into their kids' eyes, they see something their hearts could never
fathom. They see God's true love for them. They see inspiration. They see a miracle(s).
They see, well, something bigger than them. They see... God.
I could go on, on end, about how being a mother makes me
feel or how it has transformed me as an individual, but that could just be me,
for I don't know about your experience - you who's reading this right now. But
let's just agree on one thing; motherhood has its bad days, it does. But it's
mostly a crazy party you wish would never end :-).
My 5-year-old promised
to let me lose today because the teacher told them to help their mothers on
Mothers' Day, but I've been breaking my back since we got home from church as
usual. No complains, though :-). Gotta go now, mommy duties call :-).
Again, Happy Mothers' Day, fellow mothers. Catch you all in
my next post when I address you each and let everyone understand why we will
never truly know what we want, but that we shall try being the best we can be till...
well... till we are no more!
Till then, God bless.
P.S.: Listen to Matt
Redman's 'Never Once' from his 2010
album; '10, 000 Reasons'.